The destabilizing tremors of the Egyptian uprising began to be felt across the region Tuesday, as Jordan’s king dismissed his government, the Palestinian Authority promised new elections and governments in countries from Yemen to Syria turned “reform” into a buzzword.

Analysts said the actions betrayed an acute level of concern within governments throughout the Arab world — governments that must now manage the fallout from the riveting images from Egypt and Tunisia that have left their nations spellbound. On Tuesday, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told his nation that he would not seek another term in office — but there were few signs that his concession will be enough to satisfy the hundreds of thousands of protesters who filled Cairo’s Tahrir Square calling for his immediate ouster.

The sense of fear and anxiety also underlined the delicate dilemma facing the Obama administration — which is quietly working behind the scenes to push Mubarak aside without terrifying autocratic allies in the region. President Barack Obama, in his most forceful remarks yet on the Egyptian crisis, said Tuesday night that an “orderly transition” in Egypt must begin now and must lead to free and fair elections. Obama said he spoke to Mubarak for 30 minutes Tuesday and that the Egyptian president understands that “the status quo is not sustainable, change must take place.”

“This is not [a] regime change,” Marc Lynch, director of George Washington University’s Institute for Middle East Studies, said of the events in Amman, Jordan. “This is a defensive mechanism, and it’s the traditional defensive mechanism.”

“It is really clear that the leaders are flying scared,” he said.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II named a new prime minister, Marouf al-Bakhit, late Tuesday and ordered him to “undertake quick and tangible steps for real political reforms, which reflect our vision for comprehensive modernization and development in Jordan,” according to a statement.

The king described economic reform as a “necessity to provide a better life for our people, but we won’t be able to attain that without real political reforms, which must increase popular participation in the decision making.” Abdullah’s statement also called for an “immediate revision” of the laws governing politics and public freedom.

The Jordanian monarchy is still widely viewed as stable in spite of a large and restive population of Palestinian refugees and observers who said it is unclear whether the shake-up — unlike Mubarak’s new government in Egypt — represents a move toward real change.

“What we see is the king realizing that this is a serious public movement, both on its own right and when viewed in the regional context, and so he gave the protesters what they were asking for, namely, a change of government, and by doing so, he hopes to ensure that they do not demand anything more,” said Ghaith al-Omari, who is of Jordanian descent and serves as advocacy director for the American Task Force on Palestine.

Former Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher said, however, that the move could trigger real change.

“It’s a serious wake-up call that reform can’t wait any longer,” said Muasher, who is now vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, though he added that “Jordan is different from Tunisia and Egypt; there’s no fear of the system collapsing in any way.”

Muasher developed a political reform plan five years ago, but as soon as the Jordanian political establishment raised alarms, “the king backed away from it,” said Martin Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel and current director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. “So, the king has a template — the Muasher plan. The question is whether he will now have the basis to go to the East Bank establishment and say, ‘Gentlemen, sink or swim? If we do not implement this political reform program now, we will all go down together.’”

What is clear is that the turmoil in Tunisia and Egypt has roiled the region with an intensity not seen since the 1970s. And the evident American and European willingness to watch Mubarak fall may have prompted autocrats to re-evalute their own relationships.

“They’re dumbfounded by the notion that the U.S. government’s rhetoric about human rights and democracy might actually mean something, as opposed to representing a set of meaningless talking points they can ignore,” said Human Rights Watch Washington Director Tom Malinowski.

Across the region, governments have visibly responded to the fear of spreading turmoil:

In Yemen, where protesters have clashed with police, President Ali Abdullah — who last week raised the salaries of government employees and soldiers — announced expanded payments to thousands of poor families and eliminated tuition for students at state universities.

In the Palestinian city Ramallah, the Western-backed authority said it would move swiftly to hold local elections. President Mahmoud Abbas canceled the elections in 2009 for fear that his Fatah party would lose seats.

In Iran, the government — which is publicly cheering Egyptian protesters — is also flexing its muscle, reportedly executing a record number of prisoners in January, including one Dutch national who participated in European protests.

Even seemingly stable regimes — notably American allies like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, whose small populations and immense wealth have typically allowed the regimes to defuse political protest — responded visibly. One day after the protests broke out in Egypt, Kuwait’s government announced payments of more than $3,500 to its subjects to subsidize the cost of food.

In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad, who has done little to loosen his family’s tightfisted control of the country, has begun to talk the talk, as well. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he blamed the invasion of Iraq under former President George W. Bush for slowing down his own inclination to reform.

“If you didn’t see the need of reform before what happened in Egypt and Tunisia, it’s too late to do any reform,” he told the Journal this week in Damascus, Syria, where dissidents are reportedly attempting to organize protests for later this week.

Syrian activists have been using Facebook to call for demonstrations on Feb. 5, a “Day of Rage” against corruption and emergency rule.

The protests in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere have clearly rattled Syria’s leadership.

“They’re definitely worried,” said Andrew Tabler, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “It was a bit rich for President Assad to be talking and scolding Mubarak about reform. Assad is the slowest reformer in the Arab world.”

Assad’s “quite cocky” pledges for reform to the Journal aside, “reform is a joke in Syria,” agreed Indyk. And don’t forget, he said, that from the perspective of Syria’s ethnic Sunni majority, ruled by the Alawite minority Assad, “this is a Sunni revolution in Egypt. ... The Egyptians don’t see it that way. But to the Syrians, they see it that way.”